More on my fiction writing

January 25, 2018

Phoenix 101: the nineties

The new decade came upon a Phoenix beset with crisis. Charlie Keating, the most lionized Arizona businessman of the previous dozen years, was facing federal fraud and racketeering charges. His palatial Phoenician Resort was seized by a platoon of U.S. Marshals, lawyers, regulators, and locksmiths in November 1989. American Continental Corp., flagship of Keating's complex web of businesses, was forced into Chapter 11 reorganization. Among the casualties was his ambitious Estrella Ranch project south of tiny Goodyear.

Behind much of the trouble was the savings and loan scandal and collapse, a financial crisis that cost taxpayers about $132 billion. It also took down some of the Sun Belt's biggest institutions, including Phoenix's venerable Western Savings, controlled by the Driggs family, and Merabank, a subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corp. meant to make big bucks for the holding company of Arizona Public Service. It would take the federal Resolution Trust Corp. years to sort out and dispose of all the properties and hustles. The worst of the S&L wrongdoing was the Keating Five scandal. Its U.S. Senator members, who leaned on regulators on behalf of Keating, included Arizona's Dennis DeConcini and John McCain (Disclosure: John Dougherty and I were the first to break this story at the Dayton Daily News).

The local trouble had been predicted in a December 1988, Barron's article about Phoenix's overheated real-estate market, fueled by S&L money. The headline: "Phoenix Descending: Is Boomtown USA Going Bust?" The boosters had been outraged. Barron's had been right. In an ominous foreshadowing of the future, the city hit a record 122 degrees on June 26, 1990.

For individuals, the worst was yet to come. Unemployment in Arizona rose from 5.3 percent in May 1990 to a peak of 7.8 percent in March 1992. This seems modest compared with the Great Recession (11.2 percent for the state); it was painful enough. State and city leaders committed to establishing a more diverse economy, weaning Arizona off its dependency on population growth and real estate. Economic development organizations were set up across the state for this purpose, including the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, led by the brilliant Ioanna Morfessis. It established goals to build strategic clusters around high-technology sectors with high-paying jobs.

Tragically, the effort failed. The 1990s, when the U.S. economy enjoyed its longest, strongest, most innovative economic expansion in history, saw Phoenix and Arizona double down on "growth." The state's population grew by a staggering 40 percent, 45 percent for metropolitan Phoenix. The cluster strategy lacked sustained focus. Yet none of this was obvious or inevitable as the decade began.

II.

At the start of the 1990s, central Phoenix was still the state's business heart. Although the Arizona Bank and First National Bank of Arizona were acquired by out-of-state institutions in the previous decade, they maintained hundreds of jobs in their downtown towers. Mighty Valley National Bank was still independent. Dial Corp., the former Greyhound, was led by the formidable John Teets. It completed its striking new headquarters tower in 1991 (a companion skyscraper was planned). Karl Eller built Circle K into the second-largest convenience store chain in the nation. American Fence Co. and U-Haul were other major headquarters. So was Central Newspapers, owner of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette.

But the years ahead were not kind to corporate Arizona, beginning with Circle K being forced to seek Chapter 11 protection in 1990; Eller resigned. Circle K was first acquired by Investcorp, an international hedge fund, then by Tosco. Although Tosco was from Phoenix it spurned an effort to place its headquarters downtown, eventually merging with Phillips Petroleum. An even worse blow came in 1993, when Valley National was bought by Bank One. At the same time, Wall Street was waging war on Dial, forcing divestitures, cost cutting, and eventually splitting the company in half. It was never the mighty giant again. Even Mountain Bell/USWest, although headquartered in Denver, maintained a large presence in Midtown, but this began to fade. Arizona Public Service, deeply wounded by the Merabank fiasco, shed thousands of jobs. In all these cases, Phoenix lost the civic stewards who could write checks and knock heads for the good of the community. The losses undermined Morfessis and GPEC, too.

As a result, Phoenix badly underperformed in the high-technology "new economy" in the 1990s — a decade that saw, for example, the start of Amazon in Seattle. Semiconductors advanced with Intel building a fabrication plant in Chandler — a result of Phoenix failing to grab this asset when it was dangled. Motorola was fading. Chips were becoming commodities anyway, not the “bleeding edge.” One homegrown tech company, MicroAge, made a promising run but failed. Mostly the metropolitan area continued being a back office for Los Angeles, especially with call centers and services. Incomes continued their decline compared with peer metros. For example, Phoenix and Denver were nearly identical in per-capita personal income in 1970; by the 1990s, Denver had pulled ahead by more than $10,000. Phoenix (and Tempe) did get an airline — America West — which survived and grew. Otherwise, real estate was king.

The recession's damage in the Central Corridor was profound. Western Savings' iconic headquarters in the "punchcard building" emptied out and a companion tower was never built. The same with Dial. Much of the homegrown real-estate and development sector was destroyed by the recession. The survivors and newcomers, joined by national firms, soured on the core. Office construction moved to east Camelback Road — the first Esplanade building was completed in 1989, followed by more in the 1990s. Among the casualties of bulking up Camelback was the beloved Cine Capri (the metro's other Cinerama theater, the Kachina in Scottsdale, was demolished in 1989). The Scottsdale Airpark, which was a sleepy, distant place not so long before, began to become the state's diminished corporate center. When Park Central Shopping Center closed, once vibrant Midtown Phoenix entered a two-decade slumber. Only one new office building rose downtown in the 1990s. Midtown only saw a revival in the mid-2010s.

Suburban development exploded, becoming the driving force of the region's economy. The model was the so-called master planned community, a massive project involving multiple house-builders and governed by home owners associations (HOAs). This model began in the late 1970s but now took off, making its most extreme reach with the opening of Anthem in 1999 — 34 miles from central Phoenix. Office "parks" proliferated, too, along with big-box stores. At the peak in 1999, the metropolitan area was turning out 4,300 single-family houses a month. In a devastating series entitled "An Acre an Hour," The Arizona Republic chronicled the frenetic building and lookalike tile-roof houses, as well as the monumental loss of farmland and desert.

III.

The economic crash also stopped or slowed the momentum and excitement from the Terry Goddard years in Phoenix. Falling tax revenue and a skittish bond market set back such visionary projects as the new City Hall and the Central Library. The new mayor, Paul Johnson, was left with damage control. The City Hall opened in 1994, although Phoenix had to settle for less than the ambitious architecture that had been considered. A year later, Will Bruder's Central Library was completed. The former Civic Center at McDowell and Central was turned over to the Phoenix Art Museum, which undertook a major expansion in 1996, and the Phoenix Theater (the Herberger Theater Center downtown, which hosted the professional companies had been completed in 1989).

Johnson was followed by the Republican realty executive Skip Rimsza in 1994. Seen as bland and focused on delivering municipal services, Rimsza didn't get "the vision thing" until his second term in the 2000s. The planners' hope that Bell Road would be the northern boundary of the city was cast aside as Phoenix annexed an additional 55 square miles to reach a total of 475 square miles In 1950, it had been around 101,000 in 15 square miles. By the end of the decade, the city of Phoenix crossed 1 million residents. Annexation was driven in part by competition for sales-tax dollars against growing suburbs. Phoenix reached all the way to Scottsdale Road in this quest, where Kierland Commons opened in 2000.

Meanwhile, under Jerry Colangelo, who became the last man standing of the once powerful Phoenix 40, the Phoenix Suns left Veterans Memorial Coliseum ("The Madhouse on McDowell") for a new downtown arena in 1992. This coincided with the arrival of Charles Barkley and the team making the Finals.

A downtown football stadium promised to the NFL's Phoenix Cardinals when they relocated from St. Louis in the late '80s never happened. In 1994, the team, playing at Sun Devil stadium, changed its name to the Arizona Cardinals. But all was not lost for downtown sports: Colangelo led the creation of the Major League Baseball Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998, with an air-conditioned stadium including a swimming pool. County supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was shot and wounded in 1997 by a man outraged over the stadium tax. The NHL Phoenix Coyotes began playing at the Suns' arena in 1996, moving from Winnipeg. In the limited economy, sports assumed a large place, and Colangelo as downtown's leading businessman.

The new office building downtown, completed in 1997, was the 10-story headquarters of the Arizona Republic and Central Newspapers. The afternoon Phoenix Gazette closed that same year — the owners losing a golden opportunity to turn it into an online publication. But even without the competition and lacking the leadership of executive editor Pat Murphy, the Republic did some excellent journalism in the 1990s. It became one of the largest newspapers in the United States. New Times also performed some fine watchdog work. So did the East Valley Tribune, which made a hard run to break the Republic's hold in Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale, and Chandler. Unfortunately, by 1996, Cox Newspapers gave up and sold to Thomsen.

And there was plenty of targets for the press, especially at the state capital. AzScam, a police sting involving payoffs to make casino gambling legal, caught seven lawmakers. Gov. Fife Symington (1991-1997) followed the beloved Rose Mofford, cloaking himself as a moderate businessman, a tonic after the madness of Ev Mecham. But Symington, a developer, became ensnared in scandal involving the misuse of union pension funds to finance the failed downtown Mercado shopping center. He was forced to resign in 1997 after being convicted of seven counts of bank fraud.

Politics were changing. Although Bill Clinton carried the state in 1996, hopes that newcomers would make Arizona more liberal proved wrong. In fact, an energized Gingrich-style national conservatism spread its roots. Burton Barr, a pragmatic Republican leader, was gone from the Legislature and died in 1997. The far-right elements of his party would gain ground throughout the decade. They would gradually push out centrist Republicans, such as the "Sue Nation" state representatives and senators (Sue Gerard, Sue Grace, and Sue Lynch). With the exception of 1990-92 in the state Senate, Democrats never had a majority in either body these years, a pattern that continues today.

Most new residents, whether they registered as Republicans or independent, were Big Sort conservatives, energized by Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio. No wonder the '90s saw Joe Arpaio first elected Maricopa County Sheriff, charter-school advocate Lisa Graham Keegan as Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Jon Kyl succeeding Dennis DeConcini as U.S. Senator. Advocacy of right-wing causes — disguised as scholarship — was produced by the Goldwater Institute, one of many such fake think tanks seeded by right-wing billionaires nationwide. Barry was so disgusted he wanted his name removed, but was persuaded to let it stay by his brother, Bob.

Barry died in 1998, having been disowned by much of his party for his "liberal" views. The city avoided the mistake of changing Sky Harbor's enchanting name to Goldwater International. The ghost of Barry had to settle for being honored by a brutalist terminal.

One of the most enduring effects of Fife Symington's governorship was the legalization of gambling on Indian reservations. Congress recognized tribes' powers to operate gambling halls with a law in 1988. But these nations were required to sign compacts with individual states. In general, this required a state to already have legalized betting. Symington initially resisted, but the tribes contended that Arizona in fact recognized gambling with the state lottery, dog and horse tracks. They began setting up casinos, prompting a raid on the Fort McDowell casino and a three-week standoff. Symington eventually signed compacts with 16 tribes. "Gaming" was an economic boon for the reservations, especially the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. But it's not transparent. And it brought a host of social ills associated with gambling.

IV.

After decades of resistance, Phoenix finally yielded to the Papago Freeway inner loop. The 2,500 miles of Interstate 10 from Jacksonville, Fla., to Santa Monica, had been interrupted by one city's imperfect refusal to accept it as an arrow through the heart. Imperfect, because after turning down the 100-foot-high freeway and its "helicoil" exits in the 1970s, Phoenix refused to stop sprawling, refused to create a viable transit system (most tragically voting down the rail-centric ValTrans system in 1989). So I-10 came through an alignment roughly along Moreland and Latham streets. Some 3,000 houses were lost, many of them irreplaceable historic homes. Neighborhoods were severed. Kenilworth School was barely saved. A compromise put the inner loop through a six-block tunnel (actually 19 bridges lined side by side), with a park on the deck. The massive gash shattered the fabric of the neighborhoods and it was only through the efforts of historic-district homeowners that the area bounced back in the coming years.

This was only the beginning of a freeway-building mania that continues still (with the monstrous South Mountain Freeway). The Superstition Freeway was completed to Apache Junction in 1995 and work began or accelerated on the Red Mountain Freeway and Squaw Peak Parkway (soon to be freeway). The development community had discovered how this particular infrastructure turned farmland and desert into valuable land for housing and office "parks."

Big money came to the well-connected East Valley citrus growers, who helped push the 202 to the front of the line, but the Valley's miles of magical groves gave way to tract houses and big boxes. Some of the most fertile soil in the world was paved over. Nighttime temperatures began climbing. By 1994, only 24 miles of the proposed 233-mile system had been built, but work soon accelerated. So much for the city that "didn't want to become another LA." The only victory was the eventual abandonment of the Paradise Freeway, on an alignment south of Bethany Home Road — but years of uncertainty hurt those neighborhoods.

In 1996, Tempe voters approved a sales tax for transit with the intention to build a light-rail line. It would eventually result in construction of the region's 20-mile starter line in the 2000s, but it was done in the face of hysterical opposition (but...WBIYB). Meanwhile, the last Amtrak passenger train had left Union Station, a consequence of the state refusing to help fund track improvements (on October 9, 1995, the Sunset Limited derailed west of Phoenix, an act of sabotage that was never solved). Phoenix became the largest city in America without passenger-rail service. Mesa's beautiful Spanish revival depot burned in 1989.

Nothing was immune from sprawl, not even the Japanese flower gardens along Baseline Road. While the families that had endured discrimination and internment during World War II deserved a handy profit, no effort appears to have been made at agricultural preservation. Back in the 1980s, Seattle's King County adopted a tax to help save farmland, and other such programs happened across the country. But Phoenix let one of its most magical assets go — to be replaced by lookalike suburban apartments, subdivision pods, and fast-food chains along a wide highway ("city street"). It was one of the biggest tragedies in a decade of lost opportunities.

The opportunities, if one considers them that, were in growth — especially that of supersuburbs. Glendale, a farm-and-railroad town of fewer than 16,000 in 1960, reached 148,000 in 1980 and 219,000 in 2000. Peoria's population more than doubled in the '90s while Scottsdale grew by 50 percent. Gilbert (1,800 in 1960) skyrocketed to almost 110,000. Mesa ended the decade with more than 396,000 people — larger than Cincinnati, St. Louis, or Minneapolis but having none of their urban grandeur. Not only that, but Mesa had allowed so many "master planned communities" that it actually exported workers to other suburbs or Phoenix.

The consequences were momentous. Not only did Phoenix fail in its annexation program meant to avoid being surrounded by suburbs, it was encircled by ones much more populous and enormous in land area than is the norm in any other American metropolitan area. This played out in everything from the fight for sales-tax dollars to state revenue sharing, usually to Phoenix's disadvantage. The suburbs — not even Mesa — didn't want to be cities (although Tempe, landlocked, began to see a more urban future). But they carried a regional veto that killed or delayed progressive urban measures. With the exception of Tempe, the suburbs were deeply conservative. Phoenix, meanwhile, was becoming more Hispanic and poorer. It kept an Anglo majority by annexing its own suburban areas, which were often hostile to such measures as reviving downtown. As with the missed high-tech opportunity, this happened as other American center cities were making impressive comebacks — both would separate winners from losers in the 2010s.

The new millennium was coming on fast. Phoenix was becoming unrecognizable from its old self. But most people had only a vague understanding of what was lost.

Yes, this is a fantastic write up. Moved to Phoenix in 1990, always had a feeling that I missed something and I was too late. I'll never know what that "something" was, but I am quite sure I was correct.
Thank you.

Great article. I remember that the sprawl actually began way before the nineties. Probably post war with the return of veterans. It really began to accelerate in the 60's and just kept on exploding until the present time. Who could ever have envisioned housing developments virtually to New River and Lake Pleasent? The real question is: where and when will it ever end.

I took a side trip to various high-desert cities this week with the endpoint being El Paso. It looks a lot like Tucson and its downtown, while fairly dismal, contains some astonishing gems, many designed by its foremost architect Henry Trost of Luhrs Tower fame. El Paso was an important city at one time but it now feels like an also-ran.

Las Cruces is the kind of small city that either charms you with its remote location and blue skies or immiserates you with a dark feeling that you're marooned on a faraway planet. Agriculture gave LC its original purpose, which now seems to be little more than box shopping and driving. Fortunately, New Mexico State University provides an economic backstop.

Douglas is home to one of Arizona's greatest public spaces, the lobby of the Hotel Gadsden. Sadly, the former mining powerhouse today is a basket case, its economy more or less dependent on transfer payments from the federal government and Border Patrol. Bisbee is about 25 miles away while Mexico is next door but under lock and key. Driving back to Phoenix through Tucson, I got into a funk seeing sprawl vectors 20 miles north of Oracle. This horror has been in the making for a long time and old hippies like me couldn't change a thing.

I think the Phoenix problem is whether a city can be better than something we might call its geographic destiny. In the 1990s, it was becoming clear that Phoenix's arc was flattening. Central Avenue, once our gleaming boulevard of the future, suddenly seemed embattled. Tagging exploded while retail contracted. As with many other second-tier cities, it seemed as if its economic muscle had weakened. Phoenix still had attractive neighborhoods and a kind of allure that comes from proximity to one of the planet's most enchanting ecosystems. If you loved poolside parties with Dos Equis Ambers and chile rellenos, it was nearly heaven.

The fifth largest city in the nation should ideally be more than Palm Springs on steroids, however. The self-doubts about its seriousness expresses itself as cheerleading in some perky souls, or existential angst in others who sense the sadness behind the happy talk. The power elite went with what works and sprawl became a self-justifying explanation for our civic purpose.

By the late '90s, the malaise appeared to be lightening somewhat. Crime was going down nationally and the Back to the Cities movement was accelerating. Big proposals like WilloWalk (now Tapestry on Central) suggested there was hope Phoenix might build an urban future on its relatively weak bones. This proved harder in practice than theory, however. As Arizona Center demonstrated, there's no substitute for the organic complexity of cities. Make believe won't get you there.

The perennial efforts at reinvention are tinged with desperation. We have had very smart people reaching into the urban revival toolkit without actually changing Phoenix's underlying reality. Phoenix worked well when it was largely Anglo and the nation was still a manufacturing power. It works less well when the city became too amorphous to be marketed as socially and economically dynamic. It's extremely difficult to retrofit suburbs as alpha cities.

The past is always prelude even as we freely speculate about what might have been. If everyone thought like me (or Rogue) Phoenix might have been a better city although counterfactuals are hardly proof of anything. Phoenix's destiny was a compound of many factors some of which we can scarcely imagine let alone define. Randomness is a miracle in the same way people who meet on a dark street and somehow find they had known each other in childhood. Wishing that childhood was different really misses the wonder of it all.

Soleri-'The perennial efforts at reinvention are tinged with desperation. We have had very smart people reaching into the urban revival toolkit without actually changing Phoenix's underlying reality. Phoenix worked well when it was largely Anglo and the nation was still a manufacturing power. It works less well when the city became too amorphous to be marketed as socially and economically dynamic. It's extremely difficult to retrofit suburbs as alpha cities."
You are so correct.When i came here in the 60's it was awash with engineers working for Motorola or Western Bell.Manufacturing built all the Hallcraft homes in Scottsdale and Maryvale.It fueled the city's growth until the 80;s when the financial grifters took over and gave us the s&l debacle and the meltdown of the 2000's.I was in new home construction and remember thinking-surely the Drigg's and Keating's know what they are doing-boy did I have it wrong.Oh well-it was fun while it lasted.

Soleri-'The perennial efforts at reinvention are tinged with desperation. We have had very smart people reaching into the urban revival toolkit without actually changing Phoenix's underlying reality. Phoenix worked well when it was largely Anglo and the nation was still a manufacturing power. It works less well when the city became too amorphous to be marketed as socially and economically dynamic. It's extremely difficult to retrofit suburbs as alpha cities."
You are so correct.When i came here in the 60's it was awash with engineers working for Motorola or Western Bell.Manufacturing built all the Hallcraft homes in Scottsdale and Maryvale.It fueled the city's growth until the 80;s when the financial grifters took over and gave us the s&l debacle and the meltdown of the 2000's.I was in new home construction and remember thinking-surely the Drigg's and Keating's know what they are doing-boy did I have it wrong.Oh well-it was fun while it lasted.

The things that made Phoenix "humane" and "intriguing" seem to have been deliberately cast aside when Phoenix decided to become BIG. As in so many of these "ambitious" dreams, the human element--and intimacy quotient--becomes an afterthought that the "empathetically displaced" yearn for. But, as Thomas Wolfe said, "you can't go home, again." The greed which drove those who saw Phoenix as needing to be "big for big's sake" trampled underfoot a beauty one might liken to the extinct species that live on only in dreams. Greed often exterminates tranquility and esthetic beauty on its altar of profits.

My family moved to Phoenix in 1954. I left in 2002. I saw it all happen. I now live and teach in a small town in Georgia and love it (but I DO miss real Mexican food.).

All the things that made Phoenix cool and unique seem to have become a sea of red tiled roofs. The Japanese Flower gardens in South Phoenix (which you could smell for miles), the orange groves, the old theaters that are now high rises and bus stations.

Now, once again, everybody is lamenting the huge numbers of lousy service jobs, but without good high level manufacturing, meh.

The financial and real estate industries are essentially service industries- and our base is the huge numbers of people retiring to Arizona. No real growth beyond that deadly minimal social security inflation increase. So, we have a lot of older cars driven low miles, and a lot of car repair places.

So, next look at rural Arizona, population declines in places without nice scenery and background. I think that places with population declines are in real trouble, and Phoenix may be next to have some decline, especially if the immigration deals are done and enforced (far greater population of DACA and illegal than estimated)- and that decline in population will drop low end real estate values and start slumification again.

Which nobody expects, do they?

The really terrifying part was Trump is simply an opportunistic blowhard who got in front of a huge trainwreck in America.

And if you look close, neither the Dems or the biz Republicans have offered any real relief- instead they want more immigration and free trade- all of which is guaranteed to further immiserate the disappearing middle class.

But hey, our empire is doing well, with perpetual war and huge money flowing out to support it...and then there is healthcare.

Fuhgedaboudit. We are done, and until we reorganize our economy and country to make a new Deal, it will get worse- and what comes next might solve those problems at the expense of our Republic.

Do you mean, for instance, if we had a Manhattan Project aimed at renewable energy in all of its many forms, including R&D, manufacture, installation, and maintenance, in the process retraining millions of Rust Belt workers, instead of trying to make sure those 30,000 coal miners stay on the happy road to black lung disease and methamphetamine addiction?

Something like that?

Gee, I wonder which political party would get behind that and which would oppose it?

I remember 1984 when a New Deal Democrat, the hapless Walter Mondale, ran against Mr. Morning in America. He suffered one of the greatest landslide defeats ever when the industrial heartland decided tax cuts for the rich, anti-union labor law, and greater income inequality would make America great again. If you have to ask why, then you need your hearing tweaked to catch high-pitched dog whistles.

There are a lof of reasons why manufacturing declined in America (see Winner Take All Politics by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson for a compelling history), but the larger truth remains that we are not one nation. It's easy for the rich to scam the working class and elderly with wedge issues and then walk away with the spoils of their cynicism. Democrats are permanently disadvantaged in this way. If you respect complexity and sane policy analysis, voters, along with a few pols (see: Bernie Sanders), will damn you as somehow uncaring. That said, we don't need two insane political parties. One has done enough damage already to threaten the survival of our democracy.

“That said, we don't need two insane political parties.” Well yes, but more significantly we need a Democratic Party that is committed to winning. The insane party is winning and it may already be too late for the measured party. Another generation of right wing America.

drifter, I'm fond of saying (and repeating ad nauseum) that there's only one progressive coalition. When the purists in our coalition decide to sit out elections because they are offended by the human stain of ordinary Democrats, Republicans win. We don't have to look deep into history to see what results (see: George W Bush and Donald J Trump).

I assure you I want to win, which means I'll take the less-than-perfect centrist in lieu of the metaphysically pristine liberal. For example, Krysten Sinema. Already I hear the rumblings of our too-good-for-this world progs wanting to smite this heretic more than combat demonstrably insane right-wingers.

I already have this foreboding sense that 2020 promises to be more of the same. What should be a slam dunk may turn once again on the sensitivities of people offended that their pet causes haven't been sincerely addressed (say, GMOs, drones, a single-payer litmus test, chemtrails, free-trade treaties, etc).

Democrats have to walk a high wire in which they appeal to the better angels of the electorate while not degrading reality to a point that burlesques the entire process. Republicans, by contrast, can dog whistle the Horst Wessel song and the base will swoon. Democrats are not so lucky since we are a coalition rather than a tribe. This is the nub. We have to accept the fact that we're not going to win like Republicans do (that is, obscenely). We can and must pull together in light of this reality. That said, I'd rather lose than sacrifice my decency as a human being.